Sabotaging Our Safety Condemns Trump Administration for Blocking $300 Million in Disaster Preparedness Funds with Bureaucratic Barriers
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sabotaging Our Safety is sounding the alarm on a dangerous new Trump tactic: amid an ongoing government shutdown, the administration is imposing unprecedented bureaucratic requirements that freeze more than $300 million in grant funding for emergency preparedness. These halted funds support training, public education, and emergency management staffing – the exact infrastructure communities need as they face increasingly severe weather events and climate-related disasters with no signs of federal support.
“The Trump administration is sabotaging disaster preparedness by blocking over $300 million in lifesaving funds behind red tape,” said Rafael Lemaitre, Sabotaging Our Safety Advisory Council Member and former Director of Public Affairs at FEMA. “Demanding that states justify their population counts to access emergency preparedness dollars isn't about accountability – it's politically-motivated obstruction. While communities face record-breaking storms and disasters, this administration is playing partisan games with American lives.”
Nationwide, communities are grappling with a federal disaster preparedness system that's underfunded, understaffed, and deprioritized by the Trump administration. Last month, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Trump administration violated federal law by withholding congressionally-appropriated disaster relief funds for three FEMA programs – the Emergency Food and Shelter Program, the Shelter and Services Program, and the Next Generation Warning System Grants Program. The reports reveal that the administration not only delayed funding but actively revoked previously-awarded grants and withdrew money that had already been disbursed to communities providing emergency services.
This latest obstruction fits a troubling pattern of the administration manipulating disaster preparedness funding for political purposes. Recently, a federal judge ruled against the Trump administration's illegal attempt to condition critical FEMA disaster relief funding on states' cooperation with federal immigration agents, rejecting the administration's effort to weaponize disaster relief for political purposes. Now, by imposing new and unprecedented requirements, the administration has found yet another mechanism to delay and restrict access to the very funding that keeps Americans safe during emergencies.
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